


Moth and Beetle

by rainstormcolors



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-17
Updated: 2020-01-17
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:00:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22295956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainstormcolors/pseuds/rainstormcolors
Summary: Set three years post-canon, a depressed NEET Ryo Bakura keeps meeting with Insector Haga at the bookshop for some reason.
Relationships: Bakura Ryou/Insector Haga | Weevil Underwood
Comments: 8
Kudos: 14





	Moth and Beetle

The grain moth was dusk-pale and small as a q-tip as Ryo cupped the glass over top of the creature sitting on his desk. Gently he slipped the letter he’d been writing under the moth and lifted all three, headed towards the front door of his apartment. He opened the moth to the air and gave a soft wave of his sister’s letter, and the animal fluttered free towards a blue sky. The glass he’d used had dried milk clinging to the bottom. Ryo returned to his desk inside. The silence throbbed.

Ryo didn’t go to university. Yugi-kun and Anzu had tried to convince him at times back in highschool to consider taking an entrance exam, but he didn’t have a goal in such places. And classrooms were noisy and crowded spaces. Jonouchi-kun had been the one to tell Yugi and Anzu to tone it down. That was several years ago by now.

He didn’t talk with any of them like he used to and he didn’t know how to fix it. They ping-ponged texts and the days blurred.

Ryo didn’t work, not at this time. The longest job he’d held lasted eight months, but he’d stopped showing up because he hated it so much.

His father sent monthly checks, though only rarely did he telephone to exchange a few kind and hollow words. And he sent candy at Christmas time and Ryo’s birthday. Ryo did not want his father to die. Yes, he was glad his father survived and he did not want his father to die. But sometimes Ryo wondered if he’d feel less worthless if his father did die. Maybe there wouldn’t be someone to let down anymore that way. 

(There was another option of who could die.)

“ _Amane,_

 _What am I supposed to do?_ ”

That was all Ryo had written so far for his letter. Had even Amane become difficult to talk to now? Why were people so hard to relate to? He couldn’t even write to someone who wasn’t there---

He hadn’t been leaving his apartment much lately. The small trashcans in his bedroom and the kitchen were overstuffed with bright food wrappers. Yugi-kun would text him, asking him how he was, and Ryo would return an, “I’m okay.”

\---

He came outside as the sky deepened to purple and the intercity glittered with planetary neon, wearing a brown cardigan over his blue-grey sweater. The air was cool with spring and night, and Ryo walked several blocks to the bookshop on the corner, its windows glowing mint, a plot of two maple trees standing beside it. He hadn’t been here in a couple months now, not since losing his last job. His manager had twice found him sobbing in the bathroom for that one.

The shop’s aisles were slender, with white shelves stuffed with novels or manga depending on the section, and simple florescent lights ran across the ceiling. Ryo browsed the manga, making his way towards the adult manga at the back of the shop, away from the pairs of other customers. He pulled out volumes based on the color of their spine, the fonts used, random sparks that caught his eye, to catch a peek at their covers. After this ritual, he searched for the things he had in mind. He ended up selecting three tankobans. The first one’s cover was discreet enough, only black with white text, a red blotch mimicking the shape of a flower dripping inside a ribcage. The second one’s cover featured a girl in all red tones, her edges faded into the color, a weak kind of censorship. She seemed to be screaming, barbed wire tight around her throat, and her eye sockets were hollow, maggots festering inside the partially open seams. His third selection’s cover also featured a young woman and she was without arms or legs. A baby doll, naked and one-eyed, was propped beside her. These books were visceral. He needed something visceral, to feel something stir inside him. And he went to the check-out with his haul.

The young man at the check-out seemed familiar to Ryo somehow as Ryo set down his bunch, a pair of thousand-yen bills resting at the top.

“Hey,” the man said flatly without looking him in the eye, his bowlcut hair colored like green sea glass, a shop apron over his olive-green button-up shirt, the sleeves rolled to his elbows. He grumbled as he slid the books into a plastic bag, fumbled with making change. “’Kay. Enjoy your weirdo books. Have a nice night,” he said flatly as he handed the bag and change to Ryo. His eyes were hard behind glasses framed in brass.

“Yes, you too,” Ryo said kindly as he took the items, pocketing his money, and then he began towards the exit, the night streets shining through the windows.

He was nearly there when he heard a sharp and stern, “--Haga. Haga, come here!” Ryo knew this was a manager’s voice. It made him stop.

A man had been stocking shelves for written non-fiction and this was the owner of the voice. He arranged books on the bottom rung.

Haga’s face pinched as he met with the man in the aisle. “Yes sir?”

“What did you say to that customer?” the man asked as he stood.

“I said “have a good night” to him.” Haga had to stop himself from shrugging.

“That’s not all you said.”

Haga shuffled his feet a little bit.

“Did you call a paying customer a “weirdo”? You are out of l-”

“-Actually--“ Ryo poked his head into the aisle, “he was just making a joke about the books I was buying.”

He’d caught the manager off guard, but the cashier too was clearly puzzled.

“I like jokes,” Ryo continued. He wasn’t sure what else to say.

“Well, yes. We’re happy to have you as a customer,” the manager said in a calmer voice, rubbing the back of his neck. The cashier stared at Ryo, squinting his eyes as he did so.

As Ryo turned away, he heard the manager calmly say, “Just be more careful.” And he opened the door into the evening world, the buzz of traffic and streetlights leading him home.

\---

It had been another few months. Ryo had visited the bookshop a few times more, though he’d been quiet. Ryo noted that Haga seemed to like the color green a lot. It was getting brighter earlier, so that even if the time was the same, the windows now held the shine of day sky. This time though, Haga was working to stock and sort the manga shelves and Ryo could hear him muttering to himself, an edge sawing in the hidden words.

“You’re kind of bad at hiding your feelings, aren’t you?” Ryo said, pushing the volume he’d been eying back into place.

“ _Excuse me?_ ” Haga grunted with a jerk of his head, but immediately he looked down.

“I don’t think your boss is listening,” Ryo said after a moment.

“Why are you talking to me?” Haga said as he returned to looking over stock.

“Your name’s Haga-kun, right? Were you at Duelist Kingdom five years ago?”

Haga paused. He began his work again. “You do know I had been insulting you and your books back then, right?”

“Yeah, but maybe you were having a bad day.”

“I wasn’t having a bad day.”

“I don’t remember it well, but I guess you were at Battle City too,” Ryo said as he pulled out another manga volume and looked over the cover.

“What of it?” Haga asked.

“I don’t know. I just wanted to know if it was you.”

Haga was squinting at Ryo again, whose face was soft and gentle.

“I’ll leave you alone now,” Ryo said kindly as he moseyed away.

 _God, he’s looking at the adult section again_ , Haga grumbled inside his head as he watched Ryo, _Brave chatty weirdo._

\---

The guy was certainly not the only customer who looked at and bought porn at his workplace. And he wasn’t the only one who brought that weird guro shit either. It really didn’t matter at all.

What did that weirdo think he was even doing before, interrupting his boss like that?

It was late. Stars were bleached into the milky sky as Haga came through his home’s doorway, and he set his dark shoes besides his mother’s as peach light seeped in from the kitchen. His mother was already asleep, but she left the light on for him.

Haga’s room was small, fitting a bed, desk, and dresser clumsily and snug. There were posters on the walls---reproductions of vintage diagrams of insects and arachnids. Butterflies, beetles, tarantulas, praying mantis, faded brilliance of color and shape. The blinds on his window were kept shut most of the time. Half his desk was filled by an aquarium set with a mesh top, which Haga peered into now. The aquarium was filled with air, a thick layer of coco fiber lining the bottom, and there was a petite dish of water and a half hollow log within. Haga lowered his head to see under the log, and there was his lovely Mexican red-knee tarantula, safe and cozy and sweet.

“Shy today, are we?” Haga said softly. He removed the aquarium’s top, lifted the dish and went to change its water.

When Haga was very small, his mother once showed him how to save earthworms from the sidewalk after the rain. They were slippery and gentle living strings pink in his palms.

It absorbed him to watch nature documentaries, turn the pages in science books on those things creepy and crawly.

He watched the boys in his class smash the spiders they found. They’d pull the wings off moths they caught or salt the slugs they snatched from the playground soil. They pushed the books from his hands, spilling them to the floor, slammed his locker shut just as he’d opened it. And he’d yell and he’d cry, because he couldn’t help it.

During summer, his mother brought him to his grandparents’ home and they caught fireflies inside their hands. It was a strange and wonderful organic luminescence dipping and swirling in the deep green, like a harvest of stars.

As middle school came, his classmates would steal his shoes from his locker and throw them into the school’s swimming pool or drop one into the toilet. They called him an ugly freak. When he’d snap and try to punch one of them, he’d find his face cracked and his glasses shattered. The teachers did nothing, because of course they did nothing. He ate lunch alone under the stairwell.

He was no good at people. He never had been. He used to play card games. He once thought he was actually even _good_ at card games. Of course he was worthless at that too. It was all he had but it slipped away.

Sometimes it gripped him so tightly to understand his mother was the only person he had. Other than her, he was alone. He always had been.

If she were to die, he would be completely alone. The thought scared him so much there were times he could hardly breathe.

\---

It was July now. Outside the shop, the leaves of the maple trees were glowing moon-bright in the sun, sparkling, like tails of tropical fish.

Haga was at work conditioning the shelves and was slightly surprised to see Ryo browsing the written sections of the place. Ryo was wearing a thin cream sweater with maroon pinstripes at the cuffs, the white collar of a dress shirt curling over the v-cut neck, and milkweed seed hair fell loose to his shoulders and back. It was too hot for sweaters.

Haga’s manager was off for the day.

“Looking over the non-otaku stuff, are we?” Haga said in a voice edging from teasing to mocking.

“You were a bug otaku, weren’t you?” Ryo said kindly without missing any beat.

Haga didn’t answer.

“It’s not wrong to have interests,” Ryo said as he pulled something thick from the shelf.

Haga realized Ryo was headed to the register now and he walked to meet him there from the other side. There was a constellation of small art prints dripping from the ceiling on fishing line above the register, trying to snatch the eyes of summer customers. They spun a small bit as the air moved. The novel Ryo had set down to buy was an edition of Victor Hugo’s Notre-Dame de Paris.

“It’s a brick,” Haga said flatly.

“You must prefer nature books,” Ryo responded.

Haga grumbled a bit as he fussed with opening the plastic bag.

\---

When Ryo bought a book, or bought anything, he felt for some moment like he’d accomplished something that day.

He told himself he’d read the written things eventually.

Yugi-kun invited Ryo out for lunch with Jonouchi-kun. The stainless steel of the table edges glittered, held the colors of their watery reflections, and the checkerboard tabletop felt like plastic.

Yugi-kun and Jonouchi-kun talked about university and work. Ryo sipped on his coffee. It was nice to see them but they were so bright and alive.

\---

“Why did you like bugs so much?” Ryo asked loitering by the cash register this time, not even offering Haga the dignity of feigning he was browsing. It had only been a week since his last visit.

“I don’t know your name,” Haga grunted.

“Oh. I’m Ryo Bakura.”

Ryo now peeked at the art prints spinning in the air. Watercolor mountains and ferns. Cartoons in thick ink.

“What do you care if I like bugs?” Haga asked.

There was a bubble welling inside him. “ _Buggy freak doesn’t have a personality. He probably lives in a cockroach house._ ”

“Well, they’re cool but I don’t know much about them.” Ryo flicked the corner of one of the prints with two fingers, so that the pastel surface of seabirds swung.

“I’m working now.”

“Oh, sorry.”

The store was quiet, a few other people scattered to the corners.

“… For their size, they’re the strongest beings on earth. Some species of ants can lift five-thousand times their own body weight.” Haga watched Ryo’s face carefully as he continued. “And scientists think there are more species of insect than any other type of organism. Millions. There are only five-thousand species of mammals in contrast to that.”

“That is impressive,” Ryo said earnestly, “They do seem to live everywhere.”

“Why do you keep talking to me anyway?”

Ryo’s face seemed blank. “I don’t know.”

“Why do you read guro stuff?”

Ryo looked down before answering. “I don’t feel so numb when I’m reading it.”

 _Bugs make me feel less lonely._ Haga couldn’t help the thought.

_Freak. Weirdo._

Haga felt the soft sting of shame.

\---

Over the next two months, Haga came to the startling realization he felt sort of happy when Ryo entered the shop. They didn’t always exchange words, but somehow his presence was comforting. Just a little. Just a pinch.

Haga found his way to stocking the shelves where Ryo was browsing that day, rolling the cart over flecked linoleum. His manager had seemed to soften to Haga making small chat too.

“I’m going to start working nights at the convenience store down the street,” Ryo said quietly.

“Congratulants.”

“Holding a job can be hard for me.”

The moment hung in the air.

“I’m surprised I’m still here,” Haga said as he worked down the aisle beyond Ryo, their eyes to the books.

“… Did you want to be fired before?” Ryo asked.

Haga twisted his head to him, squinted. “Huh? No. Why would you think that?”

Ryo shuffled his feet as he pulled out new volumes.

Haga held a moment and then cleared his throat. “Look, I guess I’m glad you stood up for me before, or something. It’s not bad here. Don’t know how long I want to work here, but it’s not bad.”

That day had been something new for Haga. People weren’t supposed to stand up for him.

Ryo seemed to nod to himself.

Yugi-kun had told him, “ _Good luck._ ” Jonouchi-kun had told him, “ _Give it your best shot._ ” Honda-kun had told him, “ _We’re rooting for you._ ” His friends were so kind. They were so wonderful. And he was suffocating.

\---

The night street was iridescent and humming over concrete as Haga walked gingerly to the convenience store. A trio of men in work suits walked passed him.

_Am… am I really visiting him?_  
_No. I need to pick up some food._

The light spilling from the store’s insides was bronze and clean. The door chimed above him as he opened it. Packages of food were vivid and crisp on the shelves; terrible music floated down from the speakers in the ceiling. Someone was busying Ryo at the counter, but Ryo was indeed here. Haga didn’t actually have a list in mind and his eyes sifted over bags and bottles.

“Hey,” Ryo said from behind the counter after his customer left.

“Oh, yeah. Hey. I guess you work here.” Haga stumbled over his words. He was genuinely hungry at least, and he plucked a bag of pretzels from a shelf. He opened one of the glass-door fridges with its ice glow and he took a can of iced coffee. He brought them to the counter quickly to be sure he beat the other customer in the store. “How’s it going?” Haga asked as he swiped his card.

“Well, it’s good to be doing something,” Ryo answered in his dewy voice, wearing his own work apron now. He still had the new job glow. “Thank you, and have a nice night.”

The door chimed as Haga left. There was a half-moon burning in the sky. He opened the coffee can and sipped, sleep be damned, he wanted an iced coffee. He walked to the train station for his ride home.

The steel doors of the train shimmered like the still surface of a pond. The steel loops overhead vibrated and the world moved in the windows. Haga slouched in his seat. The thought flickered as swift as a dragonfly. _Bakura’s kind of cute._

Haga’s face flinched. _I like girls._

But Ryo’s face was more delicate, a little more girlish.

Truth be told, this wasn’t the first time he’d thought this about a man. It had happened a few times before.

\---

Autumn came in slowly. The tips of the maple tree leaves stained gold and then glass ruby. The buildings shifted from reflecting blue to reflecting silver.

Haga felt a pop in his chest as he heard Jonouchi’s sunny voice ring through the shop: “Oh, so you really do work here, you little cheat.” He hadn’t stayed long, hadn’t done anything but circle through the outer aisles once as if to justify having been there.

“What did you tell your friends about me?” Haga would ask later.

“Just that you work here,” Ryo answered, “That you seem okay.”

“I seem “okay”?”

Ryo’s voice was earnest. “Yeah. I told them you’re okay.”

The art prints were pulled down and moved onto a space within the shelves. A small Peperomia plant cupped by a grey pot was set at the end of the register’s thin counter. It gave one burst of pigment in the shop’s bland design.

“Do you read anything?” Ryo had asked him one day.

“Not much lately,” Haga answered, “I read the big name shonen stuff when I was a kid I guess.”

Their exchanges were petite things, at the bookshop or the convenience store, and only every so often.

\---

It was deep autumn, with velvet silver clouds splashed over a dark sky and the people on the streets wore their jackets.

After leaving work, Haga walked the block down the street to the convenience store, hugging a moss-green-and-white jacket to his body. He didn’t do this too often. He only did it when he was thirsty or a bit hungry.

When the door chimed, he noticed Ryo stand from an aisle and swiftly and quietly move to behind the counter. Haga reached into one of the fridges for a grape-flavored drink, went to the counter himself. He set the plastic bottle down but paused when he looked into Ryo’s face. Ryo tried to hide his eyes by moving his head fast but his eyes were rimmed in red, raspberry flecks in the pockets beneath them. There was a quiver to his movements.

“Your-your total,” Ryo said, tapping the touchscreen’s edge.

Haga swiped his card.

Ryo was holding his breath and then he released a miniature gust between his lips. His lips twitched to a close.

“Do you get breaks here?” Haga found himself asking suddenly.

“What?” Ryo said quietly.

“Do you have a break or a lunchbreak?”

“… Yeah-yes I do. ”

“I could, uh--”

“—Don’t,” Ryo cut the words, “Just… have a nice night. Thank you for stopping by.” Ryo smiled to him with closed eyes.

Haga took hold of the drink. “Yeah. You have a nice night too.” His words were soft and hollow and the door chimed as he left.

\---

Haga had the next two days off from his job. He spent them changing the fiber from his tarantula’s aquarium, watching videos online, masturbating, taking a walk through the neighborhood morning. It had rained and droplets clung to the grass and leaf-fall. He picked up the earthworms he found on the sidewalk.

He worked one day.

He worked another day. But this time after pulling on his green-and-white jacket and flipping the “OPEN” sign to “CLOSED,” through the glass door he could see Ryo leaning against one of the leafless maple trees, brown cardigan and cream sweater, his white hair haloed in the bloom of a streetlight.

“Um, hi,” Ryo said as Haga stepped towards him.

“Don’t you-…“ _Was he fired??_

“Oh, it’s a night off for me,” Ryo said as if he’d been psychic. “But, did you want to walk with me a little bit maybe?”

Haga stayed near Ryo. “Okay.”

Cars passed behind them and orbs passed in the glass of the shops. A woman in blue was walking an Italian greyhound.

“I don’t know where you need to go, so…” Ryo said, and Haga realized he was meant to lead. He lifted a hand, kept it near his core, and pointed a finger towards the train station as he began to walk.

The splash of clouds turned over the moon and it must have been windy high in the atmosphere.

“Are you feeling better?” Haga finally asked.

“Oh, sure,” Ryo said, keeping a few steps behind. After another moment passed he asked, “Do you play Duel Monsters anymore?”

The first one was firm. “No.” The second one was soft. “No. Not much.”

“I don’t think I’m cut out for any of this sometimes,” Ryo said.

Haga glanced back to him. “Hey, don’t use me as an excuse to give up.”

Ryo was watching the sky.

“Am I supposed to say it’s okay to give up?” Haga asked. And then after a pause, “And who’s said I’ve given up?”

“Did someone say that?” Ryo asked.

Haga scratched behind an ear, wobbling the glasses perched on his nose. “Look, you can quit your job if you want but you don’t have to either. I don’t know. I’ve cried after work sometimes too you know.”

“How do other people make it look easy?”

“Beats me.”

That others didn’t have it easy didn’t escape Ryo exactly. Jonouchi-kun worked every odd job he could take. Yugi-kun held the memories of an other lost self too, one that had been warmer and nearer. How did they seem more normal, so much more like people should be? The art of talking and connection were strange dances. Or did he seem normal to other people too?

“I feel like I’ve botched the pep talk, but it’s all one day at a time,” Haga said. Was Haga being kind? Haga didn’t know.

He wanted to be kind for Ryo.

The station was nearly empty, just one other person with a magenta backpack sitting on the metal bench at the far end. The space was illuminated in honey light.

“Thank you for walking with me,” Ryo said.

 _I should thank you_ , Haga thought, glancing away.

“Haga-kun.”

Haga looked up to Ryo’s face and the press of lips to his cheek was so fleeting he might have imagined it.

“You looked like you needed it,” Ryo gently said.

As Ryo quickly turned and walked away, Haga lifted his sleeve to wipe his cheek but stopped his arm halfway. He lightly squeezed his lips together, and it felt like a sunset glow. It felt like something he shouldn’t have.

But he did have it.


End file.
